Gin Jones - Helen Binney 01 - A Dose of Death by Gin Jones Page B

because it interfered with lugging her Diet Pepsi supply into the house. The brightly-printed smocks she wore had large pockets in them, and she might have tucked the keys in there. “I wish we could see what personal effects the police found on her.”
    “ If anyone can get that information for you,” Jack said, “Tate can.”
    “ That’s what I’m counting on.” That, and the fact that Tate might be tempted out of retirement by the novelty of a client trying to prove she did commit murder, instead of trying to prove she was innocent.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Jack parked outside Tate & Bancroft, and settled in with his video games while Helen limped into the building. The reception area was vacant, like the first time she’d been there. She heard a man’s voice talking, though, so she headed down the hallway in that direction. She wasn’t sure if it was Tate or his nephew. Their voices were as similar as their looks. The same height and lean build, the same dark hair, except for the gray strands that Tate had earned. The only real difference in their appearance was that Adam seemed a great deal more tense than his laid-back uncle, with tension lines already forming in his forehead.
    Adam was seated behind a clutter-free desk, talking on the phone. He gestured that he ‘d only be a moment, and that she should come in and take a seat.
    As Helen stepped forward, the ache in her hip warned that she was not ready to sit just yet, so she pretended to be fascinated by the law books lining his walls. From the sticky notes poking out from some of the books and the gaps where the occasional volume was missing, it appeared that Adam actually used his set, unlike her ex-husband who kept them for show. Her ex had always had minions with their own libraries to do the actual research for him.
    Adam hung up the phone and stood to greet her. “My uncle isn’t here right now.”
    “ I didn’t expect to see him. I understand that he’s retired, so I came to see you. I hope you don’t mind that I stopped by without an appointment, but it was something of an emergency.”
    “ What can I do to help?”
    Adam politely remained standing until Helen reluctantly folded herself into one of the client chairs. It would take too long to explain why she ‘d rather stand. “You know the nurse I tried to get a restraining order against?”
    He nodded.
    “She’s dead. I found her bloody body this morning.”
    “ That does sound serious, but not the type of legal work I do.” Adam rose from his seat. “Let me see if Uncle Tate can talk to you. He’s out back, in his workshop.”
    A few minutes later, Adam returned and sent her out back to the garage where Tate maintained a small woodworking shop. “Just follow the sound of the lathe. I can’t promise he’ll turn it off to talk to you, but he didn’t threaten to report me to the Board of Bar Overseers if I told you where he was, so I think he’s willing to listen.”
    The garage doors were the old-fashioned kind that swung out, rather than lifting into the ceiling. They were both propped open, but even so, the interior was poorly lit. The walls were lined with stacks of banker ‘s boxes containing old legal files, leaving what would have been just about enough space to park one subcompact car, if it weren’t filled with Tate’s woodworking machinery and a rickety table cluttered with wood scraps and several elaborately detailed wood lamp stems, awaiting wiring and a shade.
    Tate was standing at the lathe, patiently turning a three-foot length of wood into what appeared to be another lamp stem to match the ones on his work table. He was good at his hobby, she thought. And it was good for him. He looked peaceful. Happy, even, although he wasn ‘t the sort to laugh out loud.
    She needed a hobby like that. Something she could be good at, unlike scrapbooking and photography, and that would be so engrossing she wouldn ‘t notice when other people were invading her space, like Melissa